


Johnnie Walker, Monkey Shoulder, and Laphroaig

by misbegotten



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Fandom Stocking 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9264332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: "Should I avert my eyes?""Shut up and take off your clothes."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coldfiredragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldfiredragon/gifts).



_CJ and Toby, before:_

"Should I avert my eyes?"

"Shut up and take off your clothes."

Toby does so, but only because CJ asks so nicely she guesses. They're in his hotel room, CJ having made herself at home while Toby is busy being lambasted by the candidate for existing. Bartlet, while no doubt an excellent governor, is proving to be a difficult presidential candidate. He bristles at being handled. He complains to Leo about the staff. He refuses to remember their names.

CJ is frustrated, and since it is entirely Toby's fault that she's there, she's determined to have her pound of flesh.

Toby slides beneath the sheets, defenses down. The campaign is proving rough on him too.

"Hey Toby?" she says, her tone softening. "Not so much of that?"

 _That_ is the scotch bottle sitting on the hotel's excuse for a workspace, a wobbly desk equipped with a poor lamp and a tiny pad of paper with the hotel's name embossed on it.

"Maybe," Toby demurs. And then, kissing her, "We can't keep doing this, you know."

She is timeless in his bed, ageless. He is grounded, a little drunk, surprisingly not a poet despite his facility for language. He shows his appreciation in his caresses, in the scratch of his beard on her skin, in the soft sigh he gives as he enters her.

"I know," she says afterwards, picking up the thread of their conversation. He still wears his wedding ring, after all. A part of him, a large part of him, will never be hers.

But now is enough.

_CJ and Toby during:_

"I will not cook, clean, nor provide any other domestic service for you ungrateful wretches!" CJ proclaims when she appears on Toby's doorstep, bearing an apple pie, a bottle of red wine, and an attitude. The turkeys were entirely their fault, after all. 

"Nobody asked you to," Toby says mildly, letting her in. Sam and Josh are watching football, drinking beer, and eating sandwiches. CJ, thinking of Troy, opts for pie.

It's a good evening that wears into a long one, because although they spend entirely too much of their lives together, none of them are very good at being apart. The boys, as she thinks of them affectionately, eventually beg off though, leaving CJ and Toby with no more pie and the bottle of wine.

They polish it off, and then switch to scotch. CJ curls up on the sofa next to Toby, her head on his shoulder.

"Are you going to sleep?" he asks.

"'M not," she replies sleepily. She's had nothing but pie and alcohol, after all. With a sigh, not at all long suffering but simply contentment with the way things are, Toby extricates himself.

"To bed," he says, offering her his hand. She won't fit on his couch, at least not comfortably.

"You certainly know how to woo a girl." She yawns as she rises, pads down the hallway shedding clothing as she goes.

Toby has a new bed, she notes. She hasn't been in it to lament the passing of the old one, but the new bed speaks of comfort and uncomplicated friendship, reminds her of days gone by when they knew each other intimately. Now they know each other intimately but not intimately, in each other's heads and hearts but not elsewhere.

He lends her a t-shirt. She drapes her bra over the bedpost because she knows it will annoy him.

"Get some sleep," he says, kissing her on the forehead. She curls beneath the sheets and feels as if life is suddenly less muddled.

"Toby?"

"Yeah."

"Stay with me?"

And so he does, running his fingers through her hair as she drifts off. 

_CJ and Toby, after:_

They send each other cards. He scrawls cryptic, poetic snippets about the twins on the back of photographs. She collects postcards from California and sends them in bunches, carefully numbered so he knows if he's missed one.

A news story about a presidential pardon is a strange sort of love letter, but Danny doesn't object to her having it pinned to the corkboard over the desk that isn't a desk, more of a collection of baby toys and style manuals. He writes, she works, the baby grows into a beautiful child, and CJ looks at the news clipping and thinks of Toby frequently.

They meet, on occasions. She threads her fingers through his as she tells him about life and work, of the triumphs and tribulations that punctuate her existence. 

He looks older, worn down but not defeated. Toby will never be defeated. And that, she thinks as she presses a kiss to his cheek, is why she will always love him. 

Time passes, but they don't part. Familiar faces drift by, the past and present in wisps of chatter and greetings. They catch up simply by being next to one another, recharging the batteries of their friendship with scotch -- she never drinks it without thinking of him -- and the mere existence of each other. 

Some things are inevitable, however, and though she's ignored countless opportunities to leave time is not on her side.

"Be good," she says, her lips on his.

"That's debatable." Everything is debatable with Toby. Another reason to love him.

"Be well," she amends.

"That's the challenge, isn't it?" 

She smiles at him fondly. "Avert your eyes," she says.

When he looks back, she's gone. There's a new bottle of scotch where she sat.


End file.
